#69 - The Bad Side of REM Sleep
“One night I jumped out of bed, raced out of the bedroom, ran down the hall - into the kitchen, went through the back door - keep in mind the glass door was closed so I went straight through it - but even that didn’t wake me up! It wasn’t until I was trying to climb over the back corrugated iron fence that I woke up because my hands were bleeding!”
This was one of the stories that my client told me in our first session. He had REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder.
When we are in REM sleep, we usually dream. We ‘see’ images in an unusual landscape and people can differ in how vivid and frightening these dreams are.
My client often had vivid dreams that usually involved some sort of threat. This also meant he would be escaping or running away.
You may have also had a dream like this, where you’ve tried to run away.
The good news for you is that your actual body was still.
That’s because we’re practically paralysed during REM sleep. This helps to prevent us from acting out our dreams - from jumping out of bed and running through glass doors.
In that way, REM sleep can protect us from harm.
Unfortunately, my client wasn’t afforded the same protection. And going to sleep at night was a frightening situation …
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When we had parents bringing their school-aged kids to our clinic in the mid-2000s, we ended up inventing a new therapy called Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Behavioural Insomnia of Childhood.
We dislike syllables - and also wonder why the word ‘abbreviation’ is so long …
So we’re gonna name the therapy Kid WINK and later this year provide a course for people to learn about it.
When we crunched the data evaluating our Kid WINK therapy, we were delighted that the kids slept better.
We were also extra happy that the sleep therapy alleviated their anxiety levels.
But was their sleep and anxiety connected?
For the past decade, we began exploring what linked school kids’ sleep to their anxiety. We wrote an earlier article about it here.
In the mid-2010s, we noticed a new theory being proposed by those who work with adult insomnia. They had noticed that more people with insomnia were showing ‘broken REM sleep’. More importantly, they were proposing that the more REM sleep was broken, the more emotional problems were experienced by those with insomnia.
A year before COVID-19 became a talking point, we published a study investigating ‘REM Sleep Fragmentation’ in a group of 160 teenagers.
As was seen in adults with insomnia, we similarly found a link between the disruption of REM sleep and emotional symptoms - specifically, depression. The more fragments found in REM sleep, the worse the teenagers’ depression scores.
Back to the school kids …
We then wondered if our school kids’ sleep and anxiety were linked via REM Sleep.
In other words:
Was there a link between their self-reported anxiety scores and the number of fragments in their REM sleep?
Did our sleep therapy change these disruptions to their REM sleep, thus helping them to regulate their anxiety?
We’re still running this study at the moment, and so far, Question 1 looks to be true. Question 2 will take some time to answer as we measure children’s sleep with Polysomnography (i.e., multiple sleep measures of brain activity, eye and muscle movements) after our therapy.
Stay Tuned!
14 months ago - shortly after I managed to escape Europe as the corona virus was spreading - a group of us started a new project related to REM sleep.
This one was going to test a new device.
The device was called - DreamChanger - and it was said to help children with their nightmares.
Nightmares occur during REM sleep, and can be fairly common in children (up to 50%). And then there’s ‘Nightmare Disorder’ which is diagnosed when the nightmares become more frequent, severe, and affect the child and the family in a big way.
Before the science could be published, there were many media reports about people having vivid dreams in 2020.
And the science caught up - and confirmed an increase in dreams and nightmares.
So our study was extremely timely!
We are bringing this study to a conclusion (meaning that we are writing it up as a manuscript, submitting it to a journal so that it can be completely criticised, and hope that we get the chance to revise the manuscript based on these criticisms - that’s the scientific process for you!).
Nevertheless, the preliminary results are promising.
If you want to keep tabs of this study, as well as the DreamChanger itself, you can do so here.
For now, here’s a colourful graph ….
5 Days To Go (Already!)
The first round of Early Bird tickets to the WINK Sleep Conference are disappearing fast - and in fact cease after April 10th (btw, it’s April 5th as I write this).
Here’s the list of cool studies that will be reported …
And here’s a bunch of cool ‘door prizes’ that will be won on the day …
1 Nanit Floorstand
It’s a FitBit and a Baby Monitor rolled into one - and is great for personal use or for research. just don’t re-gift … (cute baby not included)
2 Somnox Sleep Robot
It’s a great Dinner Party conversation starter when you tell everyone you slept with a robot last night. But this piece of sleep tech is far from a joke. Even if you haven’t heard of ‘Dragons Den’ or the ‘Insight Timer app’, you’ve surely heard of the Stock Market …
3 Helping Your Child with Sleep Problems
It’s helping so many families who have sleepless school aged kids. And even health professionals have bought it, read it, and learned the sleep therapy we invented. If you win one of the copies on the day, please don’t ask us to sign it … (yes, others have asked us to sign a copy for them…)
4 ChiliPad
Summer is starting to leave us in Australia, but those warms nights sucked. This device can help those who sleep hot (even when it’s not hot).
5 Hemp Oz Soothing Tea
I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve learned red meat is not good for me. So I tried going without it for a week - it’s now been 3 months without it. And my mind is turning to putting healthy stuff into my body. Like this stuff …